DT e-Paper Saturday 09 September 2017

We are all Rohingya
The world has abandoned them, but Bangladesh must not
Opinion 11
DT
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2017
• K Anis Ahmed
On August 26 of this year,
Myanmar launched
a fresh campaign of
violence in its Western
Rakhine province that killed
hundreds of Rohingya civilians
and displaced a staggering 100,000
to neighbouring Bangladesh in
barely two weeks.
Myanmar forces unleashed
such a carnage in response to
sudden attacks carried out on
August 25 by the self-styled
Rohingya insurgent group ARSA
(Arakan Rohingya Salvation
Army). ARSA’s coordinated attacks
on 24 police posts left 11 security
personnel dead.
No state would tolerate attacks
on its security personnel. But to
punish an entire community is
never an acceptable response to
aggression by a few. To turn those
acts of aggression into a pretext
for ethnic cleansing is to commit
crimes against humanity.
Many nations are rightly wary
of non-state armed actors in the
post-9/11 world order. However,
it is important to remember
that not all armed groups --
especially those that fight only
members of security forces who
have a record of mass civilian
killings -- are “extremists” or
part of international terrorist
conspiracies.
Let us be clear at the outset in
saying that neither Bangladesh
-- nor Dhaka Tribune -- supports
ARSA, nor do we condone its
violent attacks. Indeed, the state
of Bangladesh does not support
separatist groups anywhere, least
of all among its neighbours.
But unfortunately, Myanmar’s
allies China and India have been
all too ready to go along with
Myanmar’s demonstrably partial
narrative. And so Bangladesh is
compelled to stand apart on this
issue, and also feeling the full
brunt of Myanmar’s persecution
of Rohingyas -- a far greater
crime than ARSA’s ill-conceived
adventure last month.
Myanmar’s policy towards the
Rohingyas is to clear them out
entirely from their homeland,
Rakhine province. It is possibly the
most openly stated and diligently
carried out ethnic purge of recent
times. Thanks to this policy,
Bangladesh has had to play host
to Rohingya refugees in small
numbers as far back as the late
70s, and in substantial numbers
since the early 90s, numbering up
to half a million at times.
The attacks today show signs of
a new intensity. Reports of military
and police personnel, at times with
machete-wielding civilian militias
in tow, are burning villages,
hacking children, and shooting
unarmed civilians. Bodies are
floating up the Naf River bordering
Myanmar and Bangladesh. Fleeing
refugees have had their legs
blown off by landmines laid by the
Myanmar army on their side of the
border.
In the middle of such carnage,
Narendra Modi, prime minister
of India, went ahead with a prescheduled
state visit to Myanmar,
where he expressed full solidarity
with the Myanmar state in their
fight against “extremist violence.”
But he said nothing about the
killing of civilians.
He stressed the importance of
“unity and territorial integrity,”
perhaps channeling Indian anxiety
about their own separatists. But
that may not be the only reason
behind his distinctly one-sided
statement.
China and India have their own
complex set of relationships in this
region. India right now is shaken
from its recent confrontation with
China over the Doklam plateau
in Bhutan. In the past decade,
India has also tried to cultivate
Myanmar, which fell into China’s
orbit during its long sojourn as a
pariah state.
Yet as China has cozied up to
India’s old ally of Bangladesh,
India has felt the need to
strengthen its ties with Myanmar
as a hedge against China’s regional
aspirations. Hence, it may look
away as Myanmar conducts
atrocities against its own citizens.
Meanwhile, China as per its
longstanding policies, doesn’t
believe in chiding anyone over
matters of human rights.
Bangladesh fully shares the
Indian and Chinese concerns
about respecting the “unity and
territorial integrity” of states.
But to condone the wholesale
killing of civilians in the name of
fighting insurgents is not tolerable.
Western powers, meanwhile, are
sounding the right notes, but
may no longer be in a position to
outweigh the influence of regional
heavies.
The West is hardly guiltless
in the plight of the Rohingyas.
Western powers nurtured Aung
San Suu Kyi as an icon of liberty
back when Myanmar was a pariah
coddled by the Russo-Chinese
bloc. The West was so anxious to
see Suu Kyi anointed a leader that
they went along with a charade of
democracy arranged by Myanmar’s
military junta, ignoring both that
there was no real transfer of power
The greatest test of our humanity
We must help them
avoid the cruelest
of fates: Becoming
nothing
taking place and the continuing
tendency to commit gross human
rights abuses by those powers. If
anything, fronting a figure like Suu
Kyi has made it easier and more
attractive for the junta to carry on
its long-running ethnic purge of
the Rohingyas.
If the West had been guilty of
folly, then India and China are
practicing realpolitik. India today
is playing a role, incidentally, that
America played in 1971 when the
Nixon administration decided to
let Pakistan have its genocide in
Bangladesh as a price for access
to China. Bangladesh was saved
then by a pugnacious India -- and
leaders like Bangabandhu Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman, the founder of
Bangladesh, and his iron-willed
counterpart across the border,
Indira Gandhi.
In an acute irony of history,
today it has fallen on Bangladesh,
and Sheikh Mujib’s daughter
Sheikh Hasina, prime minister
now of Bangladesh, to give shelter
to a people as desperate as we
ourselves were in 1971.
To shelter the Rohingyas will
not be an easy task for Bangladesh.
We are the most densely populated
large nation of the world, and
we have only recently graduated
to lower middle-income status.
What’s more, for a long time,
many Bangladeshis remained wary
of the Rohingyas.
Many have argued that camps
of destitute people would become
a hive of criminal activity and
upset the social balance of
wherever they settled. What
such prognoses get wrong is the
causality; it’s not the poor who
cause those crimes -- they become
tools of the criminal, if they are
not given adequate protection.
Bangladesh, one of the biggest
emigrant nations -- both legal and
illegal -- cannot indulge in the kind
of prejudice that they themselves
face in many places where they
seek a better livelihood. I confess
that during a similar episode of
violence against Rohingyas back in
2012, I too had argued for keeping
a tight border, fearing that an open
border would only encourage more
persecution. Such considerations
were predicated on the world
putting pressure on Myanmar to
stop its policy of ethnocide.
As we face a new reality today,
where Myanmar seems intent not
so much on killing a few to chase
away the many, but to kill as many
as they can, there is a sea-change
in Bangladeshi public opinion in
favour of assisting those fleeing
imminent death.
The signal for a new approach
came right from the top when
MAHMUD HOSSAIN OPU
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
called for “humane” treatment
at the border. As a result, despite
an occasional show of pushing
some refugees back by the border
guards, the Rohingyas are allowed
into Bangladesh by the thousands
every day.
At a time when the whole world
has abandoned the Rohingyas, I
personally no longer see housing
them as a burden. Rather, I see it
as a privilege. It’s not every day
that one is called to play the role of
saviour.
It is the most sacred of duties,
and the greatest test of our
humanity. Where much bigger
countries are unwilling to step up,
it is a testament to the resilience
and humanity of Bangladesh if
we can play host to the Rohingyas
-- without condescension, without
prejudice, without resentment.
Few writers of the 20th century
have captured the terror of the
sudden breach of order as well
as VS Naipaul. In the bleak but
unforgettable opening line to
his novel A Bend in the River, he
wrote: “The world is what it is.
Men who are nothing, who allow
themselves to become nothing,
have no place in it.”
The government and the people
of Myanmar have decided that the
Rohingyas are “nothing.” This is
why we must give the Rohingyas
shelter. We must help them avoid
the cruelest of fates: Becoming
nothing. No matter how cruel
or indifferent the world, no one
deserves to become nothing. •
K Anis Ahmed is the publisher of the
Dhaka Tribune and Bangla Tribune.